Debian bug report logs - #1475 base disk (16th September) test install results Package: (base) ; Reported by: Ian Jackson ; 37 days old . ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Bug reassigned from package `base disks' to `(base)'. Request was from imurdock@debian.org (Ian Murdock) to debian-bugs-request@pixar.com . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From cus.cam.ac.uk!iwj10 Sat Sep 23 15:36:25 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0swdBJ-0005zZC; Sat, 23 Sep 95 15:36 PDT Received: from bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA20342 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Sat, 23 Sep 1995 15:36:06 -0700 Received: by bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk (Smail-3.1.29.0 #36) id m0swdAz-000C0FC; Sat, 23 Sep 95 23:36 BST Received: by chiark id (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.33); Sat, 23 Sep 95 02:42 BST Message-Id: Date: Sat, 23 Sep 95 02:42 BST From: Ian Jackson To: Debian bugs submission address Subject: base disk (16th September) test install results Package: base disks Version: 16th September The kernel problem I reported earlier is still present, so I had to boot from a fairly old 1.2.x kernel of my own with some funny boot options. I asked for a uk keymap and saw sed: can't read /root/etc/init.d/console or some such. The network setup bit of the base configuration doesn't leave room for hosts without an FQDN. If you give it a null domain portion you end up with an FQDN of `.' with a spurious full stop, and this gets copies into various files. There are systems which do not have FQDNs and we should allow people to set their machines up to reflect this. I couldn't select any modules - I tried to select msdos, lp and binfmt_elf, but in each case I was told the module didn't exist. When I asked to reboot the system, just before it rebooted I saw: error writing /etc/mtab.tmp: No space left on device or something like it. When I tried to reboot using the bootdisk the root disk made for me I got the same kernel problem as before. The kbd console problem (Bug#1181) bit me *again* and I had to reboot using my emergency floppy and replace the contents of /etc/init.d/console with `exit 0'. When it started syslogd as part of the initial boot I saw the message about syslog/udp unknown service (see Bug#1189). My TERM variable was set to con132x43, unfortunately (this was a feature of the kernel I was using). This caused ncurses (as compiled into dselect) to critique the /etc/termcap file and then fail to work properly. Retrying with TERM=linux helped, but by then I'd had to leave the auto-installer thing that runs dselect automatically (this may or may not be relevant to some of the other problems). I tripped over a bug in the 0.93.75 dselect hard disk method script, and had to upgrade manually to 0.93.77 and re-run dselect. dpkg produced serious warning messages about the files lists for the following packages being missing: ncurses_runtime, samba, librl, binutils, libc, netbase. Even half-installed packages need a file /var/lib/dpkg/.list. When it came to configuring the system (as part of the [I]nstall dselect menu option) Smail failed because hostname failed with `unknown server error'. It turned out that I was lacking an /etc/host.conf file, so I created one containing just `order hosts'. Rerunning the configuration produced a complaint from Smail's postinst that the FQDN it got from hostname --fqdn wasn't valid (it got `chiark.' with a trailing full stop). I edited the spurious dot out of /etc/hosts and then things went better. /var/spool/mail was missing. This file is NOT part of the MTA packages (so that, for example, you can switch MTA without getting messages about the mail spool and ENOTEMPTY). Please ensure that the base disks come with: chiark:~> ll -d /var/spool/mail drwxrwsr-x 2 root mail 1024 Sep 22 23:23 /var/spool/mail/ chiark:~> ll -dn /var/spool/mail drwxrwsr-x 2 0 8 1024 Sep 22 23:23 /var/spool/mail/ chiark:~> The lack of /var/spool/mail caused the test message to fail (and of course it couldn't bounce it anywhere either, so it left it in the spool and wrote a message to its logs). I got many conffiles prompts about things like /etc/init.d/netbase, /etc/gateways and /etc/smb.conf, but there weren't any differences to be seen and I didn't think any scripts had done much editing. This indicates a problem with the /var/lib/dpkg/status file provided on the base disks. This file should contain, for each conffile, the MD5 checksum of the version in the installed .deb file - if it doesn't then dpkg will produce a conffiles prompt at the next upgrade (ie, at the time of the initial dpkg run). You can either get dpkg to set up these conffiles for you, for example by using the --configure option on the base disks' system (though this would run postinst scripts too), or by editing the status file directly. The format of the conffiles info is as in the following example: Package: kermit Conffiles: /etc/skel/.mykermrc ec072fa4c6cb4aefe8a55db832427afc /etc/skel/.kdd 19dbdf743409e7d1ac32d571eb172e5e /etc/skel/.ksd ba4f8376a2870dd280061412def69aa7 [ many other fields deleted ] In place of the MD5 checksum you may also see `newconffile' which means that the file wasn't noted as a conffile before, but is in the process of being marked that way (this state is frequently found after packages have been unpacked but not configured), or `nonexistent', which means that the .deb file corresponding to the most recent install didn't contain a copy of the file. Ian. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Ian Jackson : New bug report received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Report forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1475 ; Package base disks . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ian Jackson / iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk , with the debian-bugs tracking mechanism This page last modified 07:43:01 GMT Wed 01 Nov